I was visiting Notre Dame for a conference, and popped in to give my regards to Father Hesburgh, who expressed concern over Canada’s retreat from its celebrated role as postwar peacekeeper and “honest broker” in world affairs.

As a tireless advocate for peace, he was both disturbed and dismayed by the emerging militarized face of Canada.

He was not alone.

Author Noah Richler, in the April issue of the Walrus, observed that the “discrediting” of Canadians as peacekeepers was seen by the military lobby as a necessity in order to both engage in war and restore the military’s “connection” with civilians.

Deploying troops to Afghanistan would “improve” Canada’s international image, so this thinking went, restore a “greater sense of purpose” to the Canadian Forces, and revivify the “robust” national character that critics claimed had grown flaccid after 50 years of allegedly futile humanitarian interventions. Richler has explored these trends more fully in his recent book, What We Talk About When We Talk About War.

According to these authors, the military enterprise in Canada is being recast as an “abandonment” of Canada as a peacekeeping nation. This vision is being replaced by a notion of Canada that has, in the words of Swift, “been all about war all the time.”

For McKay and Swift, “the Harper government is operating very much like a regime mounting an ideological crusade to rebrand the country.”

A large part of this peacekeeper legacy now being recontoured was shaped by former prime minister Lester Bowles Pearson, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for organizing the United Nations Emergency Force in response to the Suez Canal Crisis. Pearson’s government also introduced universal health care, student loans, greater security for trade unions, and the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.

But the “new warriors,” as these authors call them, have been striving to dismantle such initiatives because they allegedly interfere with values such as a disciplined work ethic, individual initiative, entrepreneurial zip and respect for authority, epitomized in the “Anglosphere” under the venerable canopy of the British monarchy, shared by a postwar America, and buttressed by Canada’s perceived role as a loyal young lion in Britain’s wars.

Part of this strategy is exemplified in the 2009 edition of Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, required reading for all newcomers preparing for their citizenship exam, and among the most widely distributed statements of Canada’s identity ever published. According to McKay and Swift, this booklet would be more aptly titled, The Beginner’s Guide to the Warrior Nation.

Of the 30 images in the Canadian history section, 20 depict military figures and events — this stands in marked contrast to A Look at Canada, the 2005 version of the manual, in which no soldier is featured. In addition, they argue, the publication suggests that military conflicts, such as World War I, were the main framers of an emerging Canadian identity, rather than, as Harold Innis and other historians have claimed, the political and economic enterprise of fur, lumber and resource extraction, including the daily labour of millions of ordinary Canadians.

A low point for McKay and Swift is the uncritical showcasing of Governor General John Buchan, depicted in native headdress,

According to the authors, Buchan believed that black Africans “called out” Great Britain to rule over them, ran racially segregated concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War, and labelled Canada a “white man’s democracy.”

As the above critics acknowledge, Canada’s role as “peacekeeper” was entangled in Cold War stratagems and always carried a mythological tinge. Still, it remained a sought-after ideal, a vision of a nation that could endeavour to be fair, just and peace-promoting on the world stage.

It is a vision worth fighting for.

Stephen Bede Scharper is associate professor at the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment. His column appears monthly. Stephen.scharper@utoronto.ca

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